Edinburgh festival: Barry and Stuart

The theme: The two young Scottish illusionists, who appeared in Channel 4's Tricks from the Bible, aim to baffle and amuse us with card tricks and banter. But are they magicians who tell jokes, or comedians that do magic tricks? They're magicians who tell jokes. Good jokes, yes, but not augmented by the kind of stage presence or comic timing that we are used to from Tommy Cooper or Jerry Sadowitz. When mind-reading, hypnotism and sleight of hand are the main events, however, the gags have less pressure on them, and as such they almost always go down well.

High point: Watching two performers clearly having so much fun together, it is difficult not to be swept along with the occasion. There is still an adolescent tinge to the boys' humour – their supposed desire to have sex with one another is referenced more than once – but they remain so cheerful and energetic that this scarcely matters. Their act is a little like being called into the sitting room on a rainy day to watch the children put on a show they've put together just for you. It is disjointed and slight, but occasionally original and always fun.

Weak spot: Like a child's show on a rainy afternoon, it's also a bit of a shambles. This is Barry and Stuart's Fringe debut, and an awful lot went wrong in the hour I watched. Lines were misspoken, jokes were cocked up, at one point a gun even fell out of Barry's pocket prematurely as he ran off stage. Everybody laughed it off, of course, but these details did undermine the effect of the magic, which was never completely polished anyway. What is more – and this was very annoying indeed – from where I was sitting, about five rows back, it was virtually impossible to see any tricks that took place below navel height. And quite a lot of them did. I and everybody around me had to peer bad-temperedly around each other's heads when we should have been enjoying the show.

Audience participation: Picking cards, lending phones, drawing pictures, having one's mind read, and, in one case, being hypnotized and glued to a chair.

Comic equation: Penn and Teller/Morecambe and Wise

Mark out of 10: 6 in the front two rows, 4 anywhere else

Put this on your poster: Marvel at their quite-good magic! Laugh at their fairly original jokes!